Wednesday

After every storm, there comes clear open skies...

"Turn away from what has gone,for the future lies sparkling and awaiting your presence."

"All the advice you give to others is for you to hear." - Byron Katie

Today, I turned on the computer and checked the date, and then the realisation hit me that there were only nine days left of me being 'forty something'. In just nine days time I will be 50 !

Wow, I thought, I will have lived for half a century. I will be the age that in my youth I considered old. . . and then something strange struck me, far from being unsettled by it, I was actually really glad!

I have a confession to make. In hindsight, I haven't really enjoyed most of my forties. Somewhere along the way I seemed to have got stuck and have lived most of it in a kind of suspended animation.

"To play it safe is not to play." - Robert Altman

I felt awkward in conversations where everyone agreed that life became so much better with age, that they were SO glad to be older, it gave them freedom, self knowledge and happiness.

I just smiled politely and sat quietly with my secret.I had self knowledge in bucket loads, freedom too, and have always felt such gratitude that I have the ability to extract joy from the simple things of life. But, somewhere inside me, it felt as though something had stopped, and it cast such a huge shadow.

"The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life,the clearer we should see through it. " - Jean Paul Sartre

Then I discovered something, that sometimes just the passing of time solves things. As some things decay and are dropped, other things ripen in their place. And lately I feel a real shift, a bubbling sense of new life. Whatever had stopped has started again!

Something has been transformed, inner alchemy has been at work.

So, without ever entirely understanding what caused and cured these rumblings in my inner life! I shall gleefully let go of what has gone and with open hands I will welcome the future. I will embrace this new phase and I shall begin again!

I will step willingly into my fifties. I am ready for a new adventure!

"After winter comes the summer. After night comes the dawn.And after every storm, there comes clear, open skies." - Samuel Rutherford

Have you ever felt such a turning point? Have you had inner situations that could be felt but not understood?Image: between today and tomorrow - Susannah Bec.

I had almost the same experience when I turned fifty...yes, something said...now...Great quotes..resonated with meI will be 6-0 in Winter...what will that bring...I do feel another shifting going on oh so quietly....I think it's called agingso enjoy 50...we really are beginning again..at that age..and it can be wonderful and adventurousgood thoughts todayand may I add...you look very young for 49

Hi Susannah... 50 wow. And this is a wonderfully life affirming post. I am glad that you feel that things have moved/shifted in a good way and that you are embracing your next half century. I will be joining you in a couple of years and not sure my head/heart is where yours is yet.. but hopefully by the time it happens I will have learnt to embrace it too!

Last summer when I turned thirty I had the idea to write a letter to my future self, just talking about how I was feeling and what I hoped for the following year. It would be great to read that now! Maybe this year I'll make the effort--it'll be worth it in a year!

And I agree with Suz, I was surprised to read that you would be fifty in a few days! I would have guessed much younger!

I get it. I've always felt more self assured and happy with myself with each year - but there is some sort of "limbo" in passing from one "phase" to another. As I continue to travel towards 50, I'm feeling it's a new era, so to speak. And like many, I suffer from fear of the unknown.

Knowing that time has played its role in moving your shadow along is comforting.

yes I agree that we can decide the turning points, sometimes it just takes being aware enough to consciously make the decision. There have been lots of turning points so far in my life and I am looking forward to this one too.